{"id":163248,"date":"2025-05-27T13:22:48","date_gmt":"2025-05-27T17:22:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/?p=163248"},"modified":"2025-05-27T13:23:31","modified_gmt":"2025-05-27T17:23:31","slug":"hows-the-air-in-your-classroom-or-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/2025\/05\/27\/hows-the-air-in-your-classroom-or-office\/","title":{"rendered":"How’s The Air in Your Classroom or Office?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Students’ air quality sensor wins Janetos prize
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By Bailey Scott<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The buildings that make up Boston University\u2019s campuses are a mix of old architecture and brand-new construction. This means that the air quality in these buildings can vary significantly. Some structures, like the more recently built Boston University Photonics Center, have exceptional air quality, while others have room for improvement.<\/p>\n

For the last two years, a team of BU students has been designing and testing indoor air quality monitors in order to better understand\u2014and ultimately improve\u2014ventilation in different buildings across the Charles River Campus. Healthier air has been shown to boost academic performance, so raising standards across campus could potentially help students with concentration and test results.<\/p>\n

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Janetos Climate Action Prize winners Primah Muwanga (left) and Celine Chen (center) with faculty advisor Thomas Little. Their team developed and refined air quality sensors, shrinking them from an initial design (held by Muwanga) to a doorbell-sized version (held by Chen). Photo by Sarah Cruz
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Now, in recognition of their work, the students have won the 2025 Janetos Climate Action Prize<\/a>, an annual award given to a student project that received funding from BU\u2019s Campus Climate Lab (CCL). It\u2019s awarded to the team whose work can most significantly advance BU\u2019s Climate Action Plan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Because air quality is so important\u2014but often not visible to the naked eye\u2014it\u2019s important to \u201ccreate tools such as ours to help assess and detect these deficiencies,\u201d said Celine Chen (ENG\u201925), during the group\u2019s presentation. \u201cWe hope to share our results with the overall BU community, and continue to develop, refine, and use the tools that we\u2019ve created,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The student researchers showcased their work at the annual Campus Climate Lab spring symposium. At the event, 10 CCL project teams shared overviews of their research with short lectures and poster presentations. The Janetos Prize was announced at the conclusion of the symposium. The winning team was represented by Chen and Primah Muwanga (CGS\u201924, CDS\u201927). Ellen Zheng (ENG\u201927) was studying abroad at the time of the symposium, but worked on the project remotely.<\/p>\n

With funding from CCL, Chen, Muwanga, and Zheng\u2014along with former students Marybel Boujaoude (ENG\u201924) and Yangyang Zhang (ENG\u201924)\u2014designed and built 29 air quality sensors, which they used to gather approximately 30 million readings from classrooms this spring. The students deployed 21 of the sensors in two Charles River Campus buildings: an older building that houses the Engineering Product Innovation Center, and a relatively new one, the Photonics Center.<\/p>\n

Read the full story at BU’s<\/em> The Brink<\/a>.<\/h2>\n

Banner photo by Dillon Kydd on Unsplash<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The students’ prize-winning sensor will help BU assess the air quality in old and new buildings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2662,"featured_media":163312,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[236,257,1000,1058],"tags":[692],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163248"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163248"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":163318,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163248\/revisions\/163318"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}